Dominus wrote on 2025-12-01, 21:58:

I'm also surprised at the distinct lack of marketing for this. I see they have some things posted to Facebook. But on Youtube they have virtually no presence other than what looks like a single video on a new Youtube channel.

Now that you mention this, it’s very strange that they don’t market this more (except for sending out one guy to this thread). It’s as if they don’t want it to be a huge success. Yes, it’s funded but 700+ backers is not an overwhelming success

Yeah, it is weird.

Honestly, with barely 700 backers I call this a complete flop for a retail product from a huge corporation.

I was just looking at another kickstarter campaign that has less than a week left and the difference is staggering... A youtuber is putting out a non-fiction book about a very very niche subject (he has published others as well) and it has already gotten over $470,000 in pledges from almost 3,000 backers.

I almost wonder if there was some internal disagreement at Creative about whether this should even be made and the stipulation for continuing the project was that they test the waters with a crowd funding campaign first.

The internal disagreement was my thought as well.
The question now is whether they will actually produce this or eventually refund the backers OR never refund (and quietly let it die).
I think the latter.

Received their newsletter today. They were asked about the DAC and headphone amp. They replied that "Our engineering team has worked tirelessly to explore the options available to us, and we are excited to announce that we are looking to use the Cirrus Logic CS43131, a high-performance audio DAC". It's a single chip DAC and headphone amp used in USB dongles, and given they are not writing about a dual chip design, this will be adequate only for standard, efficient headphones. Definitely not "audiophile level". They are using this chip in the SoundBlasterX G6.

They continue to shed more backers, now down to 709 706 704. Not looking good.

Currently they've raised only $235k USD, so still short of even the $250k goal.

I expect towards the end we'll see an uptick as fence-sitters possibly jump on board. But who knows how things will go between now and then. If they keep shedding backers, they may struggle to hit $250k.

Dominus wrote on 2025-12-01, 21:58:

Now that you mention this, it’s very strange that they don’t market this more (except for sending out one guy to this thread). It’s as if they don’t want it to be a huge success. Yes, it’s funded but 700+ backers is not an overwhelming success

This whole product doesn't make sense. It's not clear who the real audience is for this, which is maybe why the marketing has been so thin to begin with.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-12-02, 13:01:

Dominus wrote on 2025-12-01, 21:58:

Now that you mention this, it’s very strange that they don’t market this more (except for sending out one guy to this thread). It’s as if they don’t want it to be a huge success. Yes, it’s funded but 700+ backers is not an overwhelming success

This whole product doesn't make sense. It's not clear who the real audience is for this, which is maybe why the marketing has been so thin to begin with.

Exactly and first of all what product? There is nothing but generic marketing nonsense written by AI or an AI user. From what I can understand it appears to mostly be a mixer with bluetooth + a DAC, and you can change outputs without physically moving cables. Yay.

Theres gotta be someone out there on planet earth who wants to swap the order of the knobs and dials one day and will truly appreciate this thing. Maybe.

Maybe we'll get lucky and Creative will go bankrupt, prompting Gabe Newell to buy up all the now-unused audio software patents they have and incorporate them into their own stuff. It probably won't happen, but it would be great if it would.

On November 28, they had 715 backers.

Today they have... 715 backers. They've managed a net zero gain over the past 8 days.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-12-06, 14:10:

On November 28, they had 715 backers.

Today they have... 715 backers. They've managed a net zero gain over the past 8 days.

Oof...

Hard to spin that into something positive. I'll be surprised if this thing makes it to market at this point.

I don't think the info they recently released about the DAC has helped matters.

A backer on the kickstarter asked if they could lower the stretch goals, because it didn't look like they were going to be reached.

This was Creative's response:

Great question, we'll look into it, because we do want to explore working on, and producing the stretch goals ourselves (which is why we included them!).

However, due to tooling costs and logistics, we'll have to consider if we can manage it with a lower stretch goal.

Perhaps for some goals we can explore once we've fully launch and shipped post-campaign; we'll keep you and all backers updated. Don't worry, we're here for the long haul!

Currently at 718 717 backers. They have added 2 new backers over the past 6 days.

They have 14 days remaining on the kickstarter.

edited to add: They just lost another backer, now at 717.

Oh Creative...

I spoke too soon, they're now down to 714 backers.

Two weeks ago they had 715, so they've managed a net minus one backer in that period.

I didn't even know you could unback...

Down to 711 backers with 10 days to go.

They've currently raised ~$238k USD. They need another $12k to hit the $250k milestone. They'll need another 35 backers for that.

We'll see if they get a surge at the end. Though given they've been shedding backers over the past couple weeks, I'm not optimistic about them even hitting $250k.

you mean 710 backers...

The frequent, unnecessary updates and negativity are getting tiring. It's fine to not like or have an interest in something, but the repetition comes across as obsessive.

fair enough, I might have turned obsessed a bit since I was really interested what the ks would be about, felt disappointed and now want to see how it plays out And at the same time talk about it.
Hmm, so yes, a bit obsessed on my part.

I've been posting periodic tracking of the kickstarter because I'm interested in logging how the kickstarter is trending. Whether that is perceived as negative is a reflection of the trend of the kickstarter itself.